Car: 1999 Honda CRV stock B20 engineTiming Belt: Duralast 94208/ 95184 another set of numbers is 13072200I replaced the timing belt and water pump on my buddies CRV. I set the bottom end and the cams as I normally would and then place the belt on and tighten the tensioner. There was a fair amount of slack at the top where the cams are. I tried getting that slack out and couldn’t, so I rotated the engine till the slack got to the water pump side of the engine and then loosened and tightened the tensioner. Slack gone. Put the car all back together waited 24 hours for the RTV to set up and then started it. It idled fine warming up to burp the coolant system. Took it for a spin and it would stall out trying to move then the check engine light came on for mis fire on all 4 cylinders and 2 others related to mis fire. My buddy replaced plugs, wires, checked the cap. Researched the issue it said valve adjustment would fix it. I decided to pull the valve cover to check timing. The timing was off!!! What the hell.

2nd time doing the timing: Same issues as before slack on top of the cams, so rotated motor to take slack out. This time I kept rotating the motor a few times and checking timing and could see it slowly getting out of time.

So, I took the belt off did it all over again, rotated motor, it looked good, piston was compressed, cam up marks aligned with the cams and belt was tight. Put it all back together, check engine light was on for crank position sensor, some how that got un plugged. Plugged it back in car ran and drove fine with the exception of the when coming to a stop the engine would drop to 0 rpm’s and it would either stall out or bounce back to idle 800rpm? No check engine light. So, I tore it down again and its out of time by a little.

Can anyone tell me what the hell is going on? I’ve done 30+ timing jobs and none has been like this.

 

I'm really thinking the belt is too big or something. I questioned using Duralast brand but he bought the parts and I just went with it.

 

What I do to take up the slack between the cams is when I put the belt back on and everything is still lined up at TDC, I have a helper put a wrench on the intake cam sprocket and rotate it towards the firewall just a bit to pull that top section tight. That automatically moves the slack down towards the tensioner without having to rotate the engine, which as you've noticed can cause it to jump teeth. While my second set of hands holds pressure on the cam sprocket I snug up the tensioner appropriately and then once everything feels tight I give the engine a few rotations. I've never had one jump when doing it this way.

 

I got it figured out. There is a hole on top of the cam cap, and hole in the cam shaft, They need to align. That hole Diameter is 18/64" by the way incase someone reads this. I used a nail that was some how exactly that size to hold the cam. I then put my belt on and got a screw driver under the tensioner and pried up tightend the tensioner. Took another bite on the tensioner loosened it and then tightend again. Repeated till I thought the belt was plenty tight. Gave it a few spins and put the piston back to TDC and then checked the 2 holes and they were dead nuts on and I was able to put that nail right back through the 2 holes.

 

Glad you got this sorted out! Honda puts that little hole feature in the cams so you can lock the top end in place while you're messing around with the belt. I wish other brands had a similar feature but many don't. Ford makes you buy a stupid steel bar that jambs between the cam gears.

 

Only thing I can think of is Jakester9500 maybe wasn't fitting the belt with piston 1 at TDC and the lower timing marks lined up, I was also puzzled with the tension(thanks Matt for the help there) but setting the belt timing was easy enough, I just made sure all the marks lined up before fitting the new belt, I also used that trick to lock the cams in position.

Another very helpful thing to ensure the timing is 100% is to take a white paint pen and mark the old belt/cam pulley/crank gear before removal and then transfer those marks from the old belt to the new, then its very easy to line up the paint marks once the new belt is fitted and you are guaranteed the timing will be good.